Archive Event Highlight
VIDEO: Nadja Drost Discusses Reporting on Migrants Crossing the Darien Gap with Editor Kit Rachlis
On Feb. 3, Nadja Drost talked about reporting, strategy, ethics, building trust with sources for her piece about the extraordinary journey of migrants from around the world who traverse the Darien Gap – a road-less, mountainous jungle straddling the Colombia-Panama border – to reach the U.S. Her reporting has won several awards. A longform piece she wrote for the California Sunday Magazine was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, as well as first place for Magazine Feature Writing from the National Headliner Awards, the One World Media Refugee Reporting Award, and Honorable Mention from the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism.
Click the window above to watch a playlist of clips, including an unbroken recording of the whole program.
The editor of the piece, Kit Rachlis, a senior editor at ProPublica, talked about his process in shaping the piece, providing advice and support from the newsroom. He recalled telling Drost to keep a journal of thoughts, impressions and sensory detail and to “trust those ideas” that she had while still on site.
Marina Walker Guevara, an OPC governor and executive editor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, moderated the discussion.
Drost is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who works across print, radio, television, and documentary film.
This program marks the launch of the OPC’s new series “How I Did It,” pairing freelance journalists with their editors or producers.
A television series about the Darien Gap, ‘Desperate Journey,’ she reported with videographer Bruno Federico for the PBS NewsHour, was recognized with an Emmy and Peabody award, and received the Best in Show for television from the National Headliners Award in 2021.
Rachlis spent seven years as a senior editor at California Sunday Magazine, where he oversaw Drost’s Darien Gap story, “When Can We Really Rest?” Previously, Rachlis was a senior editor at The Atlantic. He also served as editor in chief of LA Weekly, Los Angeles magazine and the American Prospect and as a senior projects editor at the Los Angeles Times. Stories he edited have won a Livingston Award, a George Polk Award, a John Bartlow Martin Award, a James Beard Award, a PEN USA Award and a Front Page Award.
